Video Premiere: Allen Stone, ‘Sleep’

With so much emphasis placed on EDM in the past year or two (don’t get it twisted, we love a club banger as much as the next girl in neon bikini bottoms), perhaps it’s not surprising that we’re also seeing a return to more “traditional” musicians who draw on the “realness” of soul, Motown, gospel, and country (SEE: banjo, the). Quickly rising to the top of the new sincerity pack is 24-year-old rural Washington-grown funky troubadour Allen Stone, whose new video for “Sleep” is a quick primer in what all the fuss is about.

Watch the premiere of Allen Stone’s “Sleep” after the jump.

The “life on the road” clip shows Stone shuffling through a series of interchangeable backstage dressing rooms, driving the van, signing autographs, loading gear (awwww that’s cute, but he probably won’t be doing that for long), “killing it,” as we believe they call it when the crowd is going wild like that, and executing a series of of euphoric dance moves and gracious bows, all without losing his trademark hat. #Talent.

“So you can see why I never get sleep,” he sings in his smoothly gritty voice over a hand-clap beat and funky organ shuffle. Yes, yes we can. Good job on rejecting certain, let’s call them “disreputable sleeping aids” in the breakdown toward the end too, Allen. Maybe that upbringing as the son of a pastor has stayed with him?

The video, pulled from Stone’s 2011 eponymous album (re-released this summer on ATO Records), finds him a long way from his mom’s place, where he recorded his YouTube hit (almost 1.7 million views so far!) “Unaware.” But maybe he should consider stopping back at his mom’s before setting off on his next tour? It seems like he could use a little rest.